Basically, the plan is:
1. Existing TRI's stay on the same pay.
2. New recruits to the training department will be employed as line trainers only at first, and on half pay. When they become sim qualified (TRI's), they get full pay.
3. In the mean time, a Boeing subsidiary will supply +/- 10 sim trainers at who knows what cost, because there's a shortage of......you guessed it! Sim trainers!
I guess the line can't afford any pilots to go to the sim, so use them as line trainers and keep the airline running. The TRI's get to do less flying and more sim and the third party folks help out!
I don't think this one qualifies as another "cost neutral" plan, because somehow I'm sure that the 3rd party sim instructors will cost more than the 2500 Dhs per month per pilot savings generated by creating line trainers only.
Certainly, the problem could have been avoided if we had enough line pilots, who could then in turn be trained as trainers. Then again, with 25 pilots a day applying to join, who can blame the recruitment people for coming up short? I mean, how does one choose........!
At the risk of sounding cynical, a final thought: this plan is predicated on the assumption that the 200 or so pilots in the next 12 months on the 777 alone are actually going to grace our sunny shores! Otherwise we're going to have an awful lot of trainers not doing much training.
SM